


From here to Eternity

by QueenPotatos



Category: Free!
Genre: Horror, M/M, Pandemic inc, Secret Santa, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 06:43:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17157158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenPotatos/pseuds/QueenPotatos
Summary: There are all dropping like flies around him, people, his friends, half of humanity, but he's the only one he sees.- Zombie Apocalypse AU





	From here to Eternity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knaps_docx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knaps_docx/gifts).



> Merry Xmas knaps ! This is your gift. I hope you'll like it, I chose your third prompt : horror movie. You can read it as an horror movie :)

 

 

* * *

 

According official sources, the first case occurred in South America on the 6 th of July of the year 2019. It would be wise to assume it was, in fact, only the emerged part of the iceberg. The patient was put in quarantine and died shortly after - there again, it would perhaps be wiser to say he had been slayed. Oddly enough, the place he was kept in burst into flames the night after his death. That’s all the records we have about this epiphenomenon.

Haru only learns about this a few months later, obviously because there’s an entire ocean separating him from Peru and he isn’t the kind of person who reads the news first thing in the morning – actually he never reads them. It’s only after he met Rin that he learns about the pandemic. Over 500,000 people are dead, and there isn’t a cure yet. Doctors don’t even know what kind of disease it is.

Talk about a horror story at the beginning of October.

There are two dates in this chaotic story that are important, dates when everyone will remember what they were doing that day when the first breaking news flooded on television and social medias, everyone except Haru – probably in the bathtub or at the pool, where else. But he does remember meeting Rin and Gou, and It. It, one of the first ‘infected’ to be found in Japan, the first blisterion.

The story of their meeting is one of a kind. Haru’s walking down the street to go to his local swimming pool for his daily practice. There’s a guy, stumbling in front of him, his skin grey and a fly on a blister he has on his forearm. A walking cliché. Haru blinks and bites his cheek but no, the sight is very real and it’s not Halloween yet. The guy attacks a poor girl before Haru can turn his head away. A man next to her pushes her away and kicks the guy on the ground. There’s strangely no one on the street, only the four of them and Haru lands a hand without thinking twice. They end up throwing the poor guy inside a bin and call the police.

“Thank you,” Rin says - he’ll introduce himself later. Gou – his sister - is panting like she just had the run of her life. Rin talks again but Haru’s attention is drawn by the short ponytail and the way Rin’s lips move. There’s something hypnotic about the guy but he can’t quite put the finger on what affects him so much at the moment – he blames the rush of adrenaline and nothing else, foolishly.

“It was like he couldn’t feel pain,” Rin tells him at the coffee shop the next day – he invited him to thank him and Haru found himself a little too eager to go. “And his eyes, they were all red. And his skin…”

It is confirmed a couple of days later by the public authorities that there were new a couple of cases of Blisteria around Tokyo, but that everything was under control for now. The ‘blisterions’ were treated in quarantine hospital-like room from what they can see on their screen, they were volunteers who had helped in sinister areas around the globe. From then, the Japanese government forbidden this kind of altruism activity, deciding it would cause more real harm than boost the Japanese’s aura and pride around the globe.

Blisteria is the chosen name of the pandemic, but, on the internet and in every mouth, the disease finds a new name.

“The walking Dead, Train to Busan, Shaun of the Dead, World War Z, 28 Weeks Later, Zombie…this is it, this is the zombie apocalypse we’ve been dreading all our lives. Perhaps it worked like Beetlejuice summoning, World War Z 2 was the last straw that summoned all those zombies and now we’re doomed.” Nagisa breathes in a vain attempt to scare the hell out of them. It only makes Makoto jumps, while Rei embarks upon a hundred of scientific explanations that prove a zombie invasion can’t be happening. Haru half listens to them as his gaze is fixed on his phone’s screen. He’s waiting for Rin to reply to his last text. He actually used his phone to send a text to a nearly total stranger and it bugs him more than the hypothetical end of humanity Nagisa’s just announced.

“So, who are they?” His mischievous smile catches him off guard.

“The guy I helped knocking out the blisterion last week.”

“Oh, that’s right! You didn’t tell us about this.” Nagisa looks over excited. “Only to Makoto.”

“There’s nothing much to say.” His gaze is set on his phone. “I helped him, he thanked me with a cup of coffee. He saw my sport bag and he turns out he swims as well.” He almost adds that he’s pretty gorgeous but saves himself from an hour of deep embarrassment in extremis.

“Haru, I don’t care about your new friend.” Nagisa says flatly. “What happened with the blisterion?”

Haru feels offended without knowing why exactly. “Nothing much either. We put him in a bin and that’s all.”

Well, to be a hundred percent accurate, that’s a big  _ big _ lie. After they called the police, men from the CIRO came with hermetic suits and escorted them to an immaculate van that drove them who knows where. The facility was huge and screamed ‘classified defense’ all over, so did the shower they took and the three stage of decontamination before they were examined by a doctor and a nurse made some blood sample. They were set free at the end of the day.

They were clean, and had taken an oath not to say a word about what had just happened.

They had met twice since then, once at the coffee shop the following day and at the pool two days ago. Haru can’t understand why but he likes Rin’s presence; he talks a lot, annoys him for that and his lack of understanding of his own personal space but he definitely brings something with him, and Haru finds this a rare quality.

The fact that his chest literally burst with excitement when they race is an entire other thing.

“To think…the disease already reached Japan…” Rei is lost in his thought. They all have a very different take on the situation. While Nagisa is morbidly fascinated, Makoto is too damn anxious to the point of not going to class anymore when Haru can’t give any less fuck; but Rei is analysing the situation geopolitically and mathematically speaking, and it’s maybe the one that scares them the most.

“Have you ever played Pandemic?” He asks suddenly.

Haru has only heard of this game because one of his classmate – Asahi, that’s his name – had it on his phone and used to play while waiting for the bus, or when he was too bored to listen to whatever their teacher was saying.

“This is like, a real life pandemic game. Do you know there’s an easy tactic to win?”

“Eh, what is it? How can you have fun with a disease?” Makoto intervenes.

“You play a virus or a bacteria and your goal is to wipe out humanity from Earth.” Haru tells him. His face becomes white. “You have a lot of variable to be careful of. You can’t be too virulent otherwise you’ll kill your host before he can infect other people, and you’ll gain attentions from researchers that will make a vaccine.”

“This is only math, but the idea is the same. In a Pandemic game, the best strategy is to get resistant and spread easily with very few symptoms to avoid suspicion. Then, when the whole globe is infected, you upgrade your disease with deadly symptoms and watch the world turn into chaos.”

Nagisa looks, again, overly and inappropriately excited. “Cool.” He breathes.

“I’ve searched through the internet, and for now four continents had been infected. South America is in a very difficult situation…the state of emergency had been declared a couple of days ago.” Rei adds as he scribes some note. “We have two options. Either we’re entering the last phase and the whole planet is going to die very quickly because the disease will get virulent or, the disease is virulent as soon as you get infected, which is the best option we have since we’ll probably be able to control it.”

“We’re not playing a game. Life is way more complicated than that.” Haru calls him out.

“Maybe,” Rei readjusts his glasses on his nose. “But the basic principle are the same. Since we don’t know what cause the disease we can’t control the spread unless the government controls everything. If things goes ugly like in Peru, the public transports will be closed, the schools and the airport will soon follow, we will end up closing our borders and we won’t survive much longer with our natural resources.”

“Rei, you’re scaring Makoto.”

Makoto has turned into ice next to them, tears forming on the end of his eyes.

“…I’m sorry. This is only a wild hypothetical theory. I’m sure things will turn out alright.”

Haru’s phone buzzes in his hand. It’s Rin. Tomorrow is fine.

“How can you say so many terrible things without being scared?” Comes Makoto sobbing.

“As long as it’s only math…it’s not real, right?”

There’s an uneasy silence as Haru replies to his text.

“Woa. You totally just jinxed Humanity, Rei. Good job.” Nagisa says, admirative.

Sometimes Haru wonders what’s wrong with him.

-

There’s no one of the streets when he meets Rin in front of the pool the next day. Some stores are closed too.

“You should see people freaking out in Shibuya. Another blisterion appeared out of nowhere yesterday. They closed the station after three others showed up.” Rin tells as they change into their swimsuit. “I actually saw the owner of the place. He’s closing too, returning home. The politics are quiet about it but when you look at what’s happening in other countries…there’s over one billion deaths, and the epidemic reached Europe just yesterday. Things are going so fast. We’re lucky Japan is an island.”

He brings Rin to the gang, because regardless of what he lets appear the possibility of the world coming to an end sooner than when the sun explodes urges him to have Rin, as often as possible, at arm reach, even if oddly he’s never the one to initiate contact.

“You didn’t tell us he was this hot.” Nagisa says as soon as Rin leaves the following day, just loud enough for him to have overheard, probably. If only Nagisa knows just how hot he can be in the water.

One night Haru dreams of Rin and that’s when he knows it’s not just a stupid crush. It’s not just about swimming, or about hanging out, or gentle smile it’s about the gaze they exchange that is a second too long, about the jolt he feels when their hands brushed my accident and how he wished it was in fact, not accidental at all. It’s an accumulation of small details that draws the picture for him. He dreams of his hands on him and they aren’t just brushing past his fingers. His mouth on his neck is the hottest thing he has felt in his entire life.

From that day, every morning, his first thought is with Rin, about Rin, for Rin.

He’s sick of people talking about the zombie apocalypse over and over and over and-

“I’m going back to Iwami.”

Makoto’s words are the slap that takes him back to solid ground. Over 20 billion of people have died since he’s met Rin. Blisteria has reached India and China in the past few days. A new case occurs in the subway and a dozen of civilians have died during the extraction.

“They are closing the Yamanote line. I won’t be able to go to work anymore…I’m worried about the twins. I need to go back before it’s too late.”

The next day Narita and Haneda officially close their gates. Next are the ports. Just like Rei predicted. Everyone remember what they were doing on October the 16 th , even Haru.

“Hey,” they found another pool to swim in. Rin and the water and the invisible and inexplicable link they share while swimming is the only thing that isn’t crumbling and that doesn’t seem to slip through his fingers, so Haru holds onto this like his life depends on it. He wants to keep him. “Say, I, hum, maybe we should-“

“Go out with me.”

Rin takes the words out of his own mouth and Haru’s madly angry at him for about two seconds.

They kiss under the shower. Haru wouldn’t call it enjoyable with the hot water hitting their face, entering their nose which is at the moment their only way to breath proper air and it’s messy like first kisses always are but he wouldn’t change it for anything. Rin is hotter than anything he had ever experience. He didn’t know he liked the heat before Rin held him so strongly against the wall.

Then there’s a screech of tires and an explosion at the entrance. They dress in a hurry and collect their stuff to evaluate the damage. The conductor is dead, and the woman on the passenger seat is holding his arm, her face full of blood.

Rin leans in to land a hand but then, he withdraws suddenly. “Oh god…”

After Haru takes a closer look the woman is in fact eating his arm. Her skin is grey, her eyes reddened and there are blisters on her limbs. She stops chewing when she sees the both of them, red eyes locked with blues with the intensity of a predator chasing its prey.

His legs are trembling. He isn’t sure he can run.

“Come.” Rin takes his hand and they go on the opposite direction, as far as possible from the scene but then another blisterion jumps into their way.

“Hey, what’s happening today?”

Rin takes him by the wrist and leads him to a hidden alley away from the blisterions’ sight. While he is busy cursing under his breath looking at his phone, Haru chooses to do the same. He has twenty two missed calls from Nagisa and Rei and a message from three hours ago. 

‘Quick, come home. Tokyo has fallen.’

Tokyo has fallen.

How did things  escalate so quickly?

He calls Nagisa right away.

“YOU TOOK YOUR TIME. OH MY FUCKING GOD I’M SO HAPPY YOU’RE ALIVE BUT I’M HAVING A SITUATION HERE CAN YOU CALL ME LATER?” is all Nagisa yells at him before hanging up. He has definitely heard fighting sounds behind Nagisa’s voice, glass behind shattered to the ground and suddenly he feels like throwing up.

“Look, they’re organizing an evacuation.” Rin shows him a video on his phone. They are thousands of video from attacks all around Tokyo, of fighting, of Japanese people plundering their own stores. ‘Blisteria’ and ‘Zombie apocalypse’ are top tweets. “It seems the contagion is exponential. It started from a supermarket, people rushed to buy supplies and the next moment a thousand people were infected and attacked everyone in Shibuya and Shinjuku.”

“We need mask. You have some?”

Rin nods. They run to a little alley to avoid confrontation when Haru stops. “Wait, where are we going?”

“Your friends’ place? I saw the text. Plus Nagisa sounded like he might need some help.” Rin catches a glance to the big streets where they last saw the blisterions, who are busy eating the corpse in the car. He looks away in disgust, his face turning green. “Come, this might be our chance.”

The run to Nagisa’s place seems longer than waiting for a text from Rin. Haru can’t help but imagine a vast number of catastrophic scenario where they arrive too late, or don’t arrive at all because they are blocked by an army of blisterions.

‘Zombies,’ he can almost hear Nagisa’s voice, ‘they are fucking zombies.’

Haru tries to think of them as still humans but Rin will probably make him remark they have just eaten a human just in front of their eyes. These things are not humans anymore.

As they run closer to downtown the screams and shouting and cars’ sirens go louder, along with the smell of smoke and ashes. Cars and shops are vandalized, left in ruins, some people are hurt on the ground and the panicked run just beside them as if they had become invisible. There’s a small girl crying behind a bus shelter. Rin comes to her without asking and Haru follows by instinct. He sees the biting mark on his arm before Rin does.

“Hey, sweet little thing, don’t stay here alone, come with us.”

But the girl keeps on screaming. 

“Hey, what’s your name?” Rin asks.

The more she cries the less human she sounds, and the more Haru thinks they should leave her alone.

‘But she’s just a child,’ Rin will tell him; that’s why he doesn’t say a word. But he really doesn’t want her to touch Rin.

“Rin, come, it’s no use.” He says softly. He knows he’s seen her wounds now. She’s infected, it’s too late. They can’t risk their lives for someone who’s already doomed.

“But-“

Her eyes become red and Haru yanks Rin’s hand away in extremis. They keep running, ignoring everyone else around them, Haru ignores Rin’s tears and only hopes for the best. Nagisa and Rei will find a way. They are the most imaginative and cleverest among them. They’ll have a plan.

Haru calls them when they reach their building but no one replies. The surrounding is rather calm compared to the mess they have met earlier. It’s like the calm before the storm, or rather the one that comes just after when there’s nothing left alive. Haru swallows his thick saliva and tries not to take a step back. Suddenly he’s very scared, and as if he had voiced his worried aloud, Rin holds his hands before saying, “Let’s go meet them,” with a smile that could probably cure cancer if administered three times a day.

He’s still scared, but finds out it’s better to be scared with someone than alone.

They take the elevator to the 11 th floor in silence. There’s a dead corpse inside, a man with his mouth and eyes opened, petrified by fear. His neck is broken. They run out of the elevator when they reach the 5 th floor.

The door is open. The racket Haru had heard earlier one the phone had stopped as well. There’s only silence and broken glass when they enter.

“Hi…Nagisa…Rei…” Haru’s voice is trembling, as if it already knows how bad the whole thing is going to be.

He feels Rin’s hand on his shoulder before he sees them. Rei and Nagisa on either sides of the living room. Nagisa holds a rifle closed to his chest. Rei has a hole in his heart and lies in a pool of blood. His glasses are broken on the floor.

There are blisters all over is body.

“No…impossible…”

Haru sinks on his knees, dejected, his hand in front of his mouth fails to stop his screaming. Rin is already surrounding him, his arms around his chest, his head against his back, his voice trying to save whatever good remains on Earth.

“…They came out of nowhere. I think it was the neighbours. We threw one out of the window, the other is in the bathtub. They don’t die easily, those bitches.” Nagisa sits against the fridge, his eyes have lost the liveness and malice Haru loves to see so much in them. He’s got blood all over his clothes. “We had to behead one, the other…we were reckless, we thought he was dead but he was just knocked out…he bit Rei. He told me to finish him before he could harm me, but I…” He pushes the sleeve of his shirt above his elbow, displaying the scars and the blisters forming on the skin, “I couldn’t. You have about ten minutes before I get uncontrollable according to how it worked with Rei.”

“No-“

“Rin,” Nagisa cuts him, “Take Haru with you. Protect him no matter what. We’re his only family. We love him very much.”

“Nagisa!!” Haru tries to crawl to his friend’s side but Rin is stronger than him.

“Haru, we must go.”

“No!” Hot tears fall on his thigh. “I don’t want to! I can’t leave them behind!”

They heard a cry and racket coming from the bathroom. Nagisa frowns and reaches the rifle. “It’s too late for me. Too late for Rei. Haru, go home while you still can, and tell Makoto I say Hi.”

Rin gets him back on his feet and dragged him to the exit. By the time the elevator opens his door, two gunshots are fired, and then, nothing; the doors close.

Haru is  apathetic when they exit the building, if not for Rin he would have crumble to the ground and be eaten by the numerous blisterions popping in their field of visions, attracted to humans like butterflies to light. They soon find out – well, Rin does – that all their exit routes are blocked by the walking zombies, skin rotten, eyes reddened and asking for blood.

“Stay close to me.” Haru wonders how Rin can stay this calm. He takes a piece of glass on the ground and intents to use it as a weapon when a siren catches his attention. The police is coming their way. It’s the same person who took them the day they met, he gets out of a white van with others survivors wearing a protection suit like last time.

“Come,” the policeman says.

Haru doesn’t remember what happens next. When he’s back to his sense, he’s naked in a decontamination shower next to Rin, and everything hurts.

Nagisa and Rei are dead.

Tokyo has fallen, such as the whole Occidental world.

In the blink of an eye, Nations have disappeared.

Humanity as they have always known it, crumbles in front of their eyes. It’s just like Rei said. Just like he said.

-  
  


After the medical check survivors are sent to camps where they are given necessity supplies. There are no electricity, no water, no hope. Haru barely touches his food before Rin comes and wraps his blanket around his shoulders. He’s on the phone, his last call before it turns off.

“…Yes…186 you say? Damn, I’ll ask…no, I’m not going home right now. Can’t. I’ll explain later. Tell Gou I love her. And, Mom, I…Mom? Dammit.”

Rin throws his phone away in frustration. They are a hundred or so in this camp, reunited around the fire camp before sleep takes them to a better place. Haru finds out soon that neither the fire or Rin’s blanket will be able to warm the block of ice his heart has become. He crawls into Rin’s lap and rests his chin on his shoulder.

“Tell me this is just a nightmare.” He murmurs, so quietly, to keep it unreal, “Tell me I’m going to wake up.”

He misses Rin’s smile. “I’m sorry. This is all so true. But we’re alive, aren’t we?” Haru feels a hand on the top of his head, caressing his hair and it’s the only thing he allows himself to feel. “As long as we live, there’s hope. Doctors will find a cure. We won’t let them win. The whole world is fighting.”

Haru wonders, even if they do find a vaccine or a treatment, how they are going to spread it to the world with the borders closed and the lack of internet. Even if a miracle occurs, they will stay in the dark, living in constant fear until they die.

He hugs Rin tighter.

“Don’t leave me.”

Rin returns the hugs. “Never. Not in your wildest dream.”

They fall asleep in each other’s arms. The fire is long consumed when they are wake up by the police officers.

“The preparation for the transportation is almost ready. Did you decide where you’re going?”

They are still entire regions free of Blisteria all over Japan. People are running to the mountains or remote Island, hoping the disease won’t be able to survive into water or colder temperatures. The trains for Hokkaido and Okinawa are full, but it’s not where Haru wants to go.

He wants to go home, but he doesn’t want to leave without Rin.

“Where do you want to go?” Rin asks him.

He feels like breathing again when Rin agrees. Another van takes them, with a few people, to the train station. In the country everything looks so peaceful, as if nothing had happened. The ground is green and brown, the sun shining, the sky blue and full of birds flying in the same direction as they are, running away from the grey cloud Tokyo has become. They have lost one battle, but Rin was right, they are still alive, and they will fight back. Nothing is lost until the very end.

They can start over in Iwami. If Blisteria doesn’t reach the countryside, maybe they can live there for the rest of their lives.

They are alone in a compartment, sitting across each other against the window when Rin asks him. 

“Say, Haru…can I ask you something?” Rin’s eyes are fixed on the window, his eyes moving as they watch the scenery goes by in front of him. Haru nods silently. “If I ever get infected, don’t let me live, okay?”

Kill me, he says.

Better dead than not human.

Flashes of Rei and Nagisa come to his mind. He nods. It’s the same for him.

-

Nothing has changed with the years. Iwami is unharmed, still as calmed and restful as Haru remembers it to be and yet everything else is different. The wind and the ocean looks the same, but the people looks at them either with pity and disgust. They are a dozen at the most who came back alive from the capital. Even if Blisteria had made no casualties in the area, the consequences of Tokyo’s falling and the forced autarky was a constant reminder of the catastrophe that had occurred in the whole world. Food is rationalised. There’s a soldier posted in front of every school. Churches have never been this full. After a couple of weeks though Haru adapts, they fall into their daily routine with Rin and Makoto and the twins.

It’s just a fucking farce. They can’t forget what they have seen. Everyone here is smiling but they have never seen a corpse.

While the rest of the population is mindlessly enjoying their lives as if they were out of danger, Rin and Haru spend a good part of their time looking for information about the outside world. Days are spend in the library that holds the only internet connection of the town. It seems the epidemic has stopped reaching other countries. Australia and New Zealand were free of casualties, but with their borders closed just like Japan it was impossible to fly there.

“We have no idea of how long they can live like that,” Rin is looking for images from Tokyo. “Are they dead already? Did they rip each other to shreds? Or did they develop a form of intelligence and communication skills and are now marching to the rest of the country?”

“There is nothing new on other part of globes,” Haru looks up to the map they have drawn, each red spot signalling a new outbreak. “People would have notice.”

“We need to stay on alert until we have more information. There’s seem to be nothing new about a vaccine yet…”

The major discovery is made a couple of days later by a young researcher from Philippines. Blisteria is transmitted by a small parasite through corporal fluid, mostly saliva and blood. All the labs in Europe and East Asia are working on a cure the following day. That’s the first clear victory of humanity against the disease, and Haru feels kind of high on happiness and the sense of freedom. For the first time since they left Tokyo it doesn’t feel wrong to be still alive, to be happy to hold Rin’s hand and to enjoy the scent from the ocean the wind brings him. For the first time in ages, Haru feels alive, and happy to be.

The morning is silent the following day. Haru listens to Rin’s breathing, still in a slow rhythm, a sign he’s still sleeping. He kisses his cheek and his forehead before making some coffee with an apron as his only clothing. Saba grills on the pan, Haru hums, Rin stirs in the bed swearing that it’s already smelling fish before 10 AM again, and Haru really thinks, for a day, that he could live like that for the rest of his life.

The rest of the day is deadly silent.

Haru leaves their place to buy some groceries and there’s an awful feeling of déjà-vu when, just in front of him, a man is walking, stammering, with flies around his head.

His bag drops on the ground, the air in his lung turns into ice, it’s impossible to breathe.

All he can think of is Rin. He’s at the library, probably listening to his Walkman too loud, probably already aware that the blisterions have made it this far.

He runs until his legs give up. Fuck! It’s the same all over again! There are at last three blisterions running after him, another dozen are busy devouring other humans and Haru bites back the tears as he ignores their screams. He needs to get back to Rin at all cost. They need to survive until they find a cure. They are so close, they can’t die now! It’s not fair!

How did they reach them? How? How could they turn the table so quickly over night?

He finds Rin, already fighting in front of the library. He knows. He’s only got a chair to defend himself but it’s enough to keep at bait two of them. “Haru! Stay away!”

Haru waits until the perfect moment and pushes the bookcase on the blisterions. They’ll need a moment to get off of that mess. “Quick, let’s go home.”

“The Army is on its way.” Rin tells him as they begin to run. “There was an outbreak a couple of kilometres from there. Apparently they don’t need to sleep or eat, they travel faster at night.”

They are only a couple of minute away from home, with enough food and water to live for a week, a couple of weapons and hundred of books. They can survive a siege. They can make it until the Army makes it.

A blisterion swoops down on them from nowhere as they were taking the last turn. Their home is only something like 100 metres away. He shoves Rin to the ground before Haru can protect him and the way he cries makes him fear the worse for a second. Haru kicks the blisterion away and knocks him out with a debris from a crumbling house. He helps him on his feet, but Rin screams again.

“My ankle…must have broken it in the fall.”

Haru doesn’t understand why he refuses to move when he holds him by the shoulder.

“Leave me here. I’ll only slow you down.”

“Rin, what are you saying?” He doesn’t make any sense. “I’m not leaving without you.”

Rin doesn’t fight back much longer as a groan makes them turn around to another two blisterions coming their way. They somehow manage to keep up a distance with Haru supporting half of Rin’s weight until they see what their hall entrance looks like. While they were gone the whole building had been occupied by blisterions. The door and windows of the first floor are broken, people are screaming inside their apartment – some of their neighbours had been infected for sure.

“Shit!” Rin hisses, from pain and frustration. “How are we gonna go up?”

Four of them are wandering in front of the elevator. It’s impossible to use it without being bitten. Their last option are the stairs which are much closer and with a clear path, but with Rin’s leg it’s going to be almost impossible to reach the top before being catch up.

The other two are slowly but surely catching on them. It’s the only option they have left.

“Rin, hold on me. There’s only four floors to go up to.”

“I know. I’ll manage, just go.”

Of course they attract every blisterions’ attention the moment they enter the hall, but hopefully they can only walk as fast as Rin with a broken ankle, at least that’s the bet Haru wants to make. Unfortunately, three of them are already taking the stairs up while they haven’t reach the first floor and in horror, Haru and Rin realize almost at the same time that they won’t be able to both make it alive.

“I-“

“No!” They shout at the same time.

Rin falls on his knees on purpose. He doesn’t want to go any further if it means slowing down Haru and thus drastically reducing his chance of survival near zero. He can’t make it, the idea alone is enough to make him want to puke. But to his horror Haru won’t move a single muscle, not without him.

“I said no. You’re coming with me.”

Rin screams as he watches, powerless, Haru climbing down the stairs to meet the blisterions and kicking them down one by one. It’s a good idea since they take forever to get back on their feet, and the newcomers step and fall on them as they arrive, in continuous waves. 

“I bought us some time.” Haru kneels and takes Rin’s arm above his shoulder. “Now, stop crying and go with me.”

Rin stops himself from saying he’s crying too, but that would be unnecessary. He’s sure Haru has noticed already. Both of their heart are pounding in their chest in unison, mostly in fear, and with just a slice of hope, and it’s all it takes to make them go forward with every step they take.

But it’s not enough to stop the blisterions.

One comes out of the third’s floor door, blocking their way. Surrounded Haru finds himself at loss of option. What can he do now? Fight? He’s tired, tired of running away, his sore muscles tired of holding Rin, he’s tired of living on a thin rope.

“Haru, look-“

“If you’re going to say that I should leave you behind again I’ll kill you.” He bursts before Rin can finish.

“No, I mean, look,” Rin quickly adds to ease his temper. Haru gazes where Rin’s eyes lead him, above his shoulder there’s a fire extinguisher against the wall and a small axe behind a security glass. How could he miss it the first time they walked past it? It’s just a couple of step down, but the blisterions are coming up. Haru could probably make it in time but then it means he’ll have to leave Rin alone for a couple of second, at mercy of the blisterion from the third floor.

“It’s risky, but it’s our only take.” Rin tells him. “I didn’t plan on dying today, so go kick their asses.”

Rin leans against the wall while Haru runs down. The fire extinguisher works like wonder on the blisterions; they cry in agony as the white foam touches their skins. When it’s empty Haru throws it on the whole group, which make them fall to the second floor. That way they’ll have more time to-

“No!”

The last blisterion attacked Rin while Haru was struggling with the rest of them. Rin manages to keep it at arm reach for now but with only one leg he won’t be able to keep it much longer. With a herculean force Haru ignores he possesses until that moment, he punches through the glass and takes the axe from its place. He doesn’t even know how he climbs back to Rin, but the next thing he knows is that there’s an axe on the blisterion’s neck and that his arms have stopped moving to touch Rin. He takes of the axe, and blood floods on them both. The blisterion falls on the ground, immobile.

Haru a couple of breath before looking back at Rin. He has blood all over his face.

“Let’s go.”

Rin looks terrified but nods nonetheless. As their reach their floor a blisterion’s arm breaks through the door, tearing it apart as if it was made of paper. Haru runs to his door, looking for the key in his pocket with trembling hands as Rin keeps them at bey with the axe.

“Rin! Come here!” He shouts when the door is finally opened. He urges to Rin, taking him by the waist and throws him inside. He closes the door, but a blisterion manages to thrust his hand into the opening before the door closes definitely. Haru and Rin push together to crunch it but it’s no use.

Rin cuts the hand with the axe, it falls on the ground and the door closed, finally.

There’s a couple of loud noise as they try to shatter their door like the other one, but it’s no used, they had it strengthened weeks prior in case this case of scenario occurs. The blisterions stay there for a couple of minutes before they admit defeat.

Then comes the silence.

They made it. 

They made it to their home in one piece.

Haru leans his head against the door and sighs. 

“We did it.” He breathes. He has no strength left to speak.

“Yeah.” Rin says, just as breathless.

They stay together, breathless, their hands entwined against the door frame, too stunned or scared to move a muscle in case their salvation turns out to be a farce. After a couple of minute they can't hear anything but the other's breathing, and it's enough for them to know that danger is, definitely, gone.

Of course, they'll have to wait for reinforcement. Maybe they could walk to the library when the Blisterions would have-

Rin. His ankle.

Haru stands up.

“Where are you going?” 

Haru laughs at the anxiety in Rin’s voice. It’s all over now, isn’t it? There no need to be worried. They won’t come in. The door is secured and they live on the 4 th floor. They have studied everything, every possibilities to survive that day.

“Just trying to fix you.”

Haru walks to the fridge to look for some ice with a rare smile illuminating his face. He’ll find a cast later, now is the time to rest and heal and.

The ice falls on the ground when Haru comes back from the kitchen. His eyes fall on Rin. He' s still breathless. His eyes are red and full of tears.

“You promised.” He sobs.

Haru’s eyes widen, afraid to understand. He studies his face.

…He promised, indeed.

There’s a huge blister on his cheek where the blisterion’s blood landed on him.

He promised. It was the same for him.

There’s only silence, broken by the sound of his heart being torn apart and crunched to the ground. 

“I…No I…” He sinks to his knees, unable to move, unable to think. Why did it have to happen now? They were safe, they had everything they needed to survive and, because of him,  _ because of him- _

The parasite is transmitted by body fluid, like saliva or blood. Blood. He sprayed Rin with the blisterion’s blood without thinking and now it was too late.

It’s only when his vision is blurred than he realizes he’s been crying for long minutes straight. But he does want to see Rin. Before it’s too late. He wants to see his face.

“According to Nagisa I still have a couple of minute, I guess?” Rin says, impossibly calm as if he had accepted his fate already. “Haru you need to be quick. You promised me, you need to…otherwise I’ll infect you as well.”

Haru keeps crying, a couple of metres away from Rin.

“Haru! You promised!”

Rin’s cry is harrowing. It makes Haru feel inhuman when he realizes he can’t do it.

“It’s not what I want. I don’t want to hurt you, please, Haru…while I’m still myself please…”

He crumbles at last, his chin falling on his chest – or is it the first symptoms? The loss of tonus? Before he loses his mind entirely?

Haru crawls to him. He embraces him, takes his head and brings it against his, kisses his temple and whispers sweet nothing like Rin always does when Haru looks a bit down in the morning. Things like, hey, everything is going to be okay, things like I am so happy that I met you, things like I love you.

His arms remain behind Rin’s back, rocking him back and forth and ignore the axe that lays just next to them.

He thinks of that day, the day they met, it was thanks to Blisteria in the end, wasn’t it? It’s what brought them together in first place.

So, in a way, the circle is complete.

He screams when sharp teeth break through his skin.

 

 

* * *

 

By the 23th of November half of humanity have been whipped of the globe. Blisteria, a parasite developed in a clandestine lab in the middle of nowhere in the Peru jungle, is the plague that caused the first Zombie Apocalypse as it will be taught in History books. A vaccine is found on the 25th. The last case is killed by the US Army in a cold December night.

The pandemic fails to destroy Humanity, once again.

.

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# GAME OVER

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#  _Try again?_

 

__

 

 

  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lol am I still anonymous hon  
> Sorry for going MCD on Xmas but you know me. oh well. *shrugs*


End file.
